


i watched it from afar

by youcouldmakealife



Series: no expectation of returns [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-03 13:52:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1071217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabe’s on the ice, playing a mediocre game, when Stephen’s career ends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i watched it from afar

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, hello, fancy seeing you here, it's been awhile!
> 
> Title from "Isaac" by Bear's Den. 
> 
> Warnings at the end.

Gabe never sees the accident. He’s on the ice when it happens, ice halfway across the continent, when a string of really shitty luck happens: a slapshot, a deflected puck, a thin sliver of unprotected skin between glove and padding. It’s a one in a million chance, anywhere higher or lower, even by a millimetre, and it might have been a bad bruise to nurse, a fracture, possibly. Worst case scenario, a broken wrist and an abruptly shortened season. 

Gabe’s on the ice, playing a mediocre game, when Stephen’s career ends.

When he does get off, he’s got three missed calls from his mother, a voicemail that mostly consists of her crying too hard to speak. The rest he hears in fractured details, because he can’t make himself watch it: the way he screamed, loud enough to get caught by the mics, loud enough that the front few rows were shaken, the opposing bench white-faced, the Penguins silent, still. 

By the time Gabe can get through everything, numb, the only information coming in from reporters who know how close he is to Stephen, who want his reaction, by the time he’s showered and dressed and gotten enough privacy to call his mom, who’s calmed down enough to give him details through shaky, shuddering breaths, Stephen’s already in surgery, and Gabe is curled up around his phone, completely helpless.

*

Gabe doesn’t remember meeting Stephen. As far as he’s concerned, Stephen’s been around his entire life. It’s true enough--Gabe three days younger, born in the same hospital. Grew up three doors down on the same street. Gabe and Stephen’s moms were friendly, then close, then inseparable, and Gabe and Stephen were the same--chubby toddler hands cooperating with building blocks, shaky little legs on skates for the first time, then fingers curled around sticks, the two of them out past dusk practicing their shots in Gabe’s driveway until Stephen’s dad had to physically carry him home for dinner.

They went to the same school, they played each other in house league, and played together in select, then AA, competing and chirping each other right into AAA, where they were playing each other again, recruited to separate teams because their style was too similar to be helpful to one team, the two of them learning everything in tandem, doing everything in tandem. Until they were drafted, Gabe doesn’t think they ever spent more than two weeks apart: when Stephen’s family went down to Florida for Christmas, Gabe was inconsolable because he couldn’t spend Christmas with the Petersens, even though he didn’t celebrate it, and when Gabe went for a ten day tournament in Sweden, Stephen emailed him at least three times a day.

Stephen has been a part of almost every memory Gabe’s made, hockey and otherwise, is always there, starring or supporting role, just present. There. Gabe doesn’t think he can make memories without him. 

*

The surgery takes half the night, and Gabe spends that on and off the phone with his mom, dad, Stephen’s dad, who’s stuck at home with Stephen’s little sisters, Stephen’s mom already on a plane to Pittsburgh. The news starts bad and gets worse: they stop saying broken, they say shattered. There are too many pieces of him to put back together. There’s talk of rods, screws, bone grafts, and between calls Gabe researches feverishly, even though he hates literally everything he finds. 

What they’re saying is they can mostly salvage his wrist. What they’re saying is eventually he’ll gain a range of motion, they hope. Eventually he’ll heal, they hope. Partial recovery, they say, like that’s meant to be hopeful too. 

No one’s saying a single thing about hockey, and Gabe doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t.

*

Anouk calls him at six in the morning, apologizing profusely for waking him, as if he’d been sleeping, too busy falling into an internet binge, looking up rehabilitation odds, gruesome pictures where there are more screws than skin. He doesn’t know enough for it to help, for any of it to help, he’s just gotten updates from his mom, who got them from Stephen’s dad, who got them initially from team doctors, who stayed with Stephen at the hospital, and then Anouk when she landed. He’s playing the longest game of telephone, Pittsburgh to Toronto to Vancouver, and there’s no way of knowing what’s exaggerated or forgotten.

But this time it’s direct, Anouk’s voice flat, which can only mean the worst. It’s nine in the morning in Pittsburgh, and visitor’s hours must have started, because she speaks to him slow and measured and soft, like she’s trying not to wake Stephen, even though he is awake, the only reason she called, running interference. She puts Stephen on the phone after a minute.

“Hey,” Gabe says, and tries not to choke on it.

“You see it?” Stephen asks. He’s talking as slow as his mom, but it’s different, the words like taffy, drugged. 

“Heard about it,” Gabe says. “You okay, bud?”

This isn’t the first injury, not for either of them. They’ve both kept each other company through the complete drudgery of sprains, concussions. Not the first hospital stay either, though, weirdly, Stephen’s only broken bones off the ice, as clumsy off it as he is comfortable on it. Stephen’s broken ankle from a log that rolled under him unexpectedly, Gabe’s broken foot from a blocked shot, Stephen’s broken arm from falling out of a tree. Gabe was always there as soon as visiting hours opened, his parents letting him skip school for a morning to tool around Stephen’s room, watching The Price is Right like it was a sick day.

“Wrist is fucked,” Stephen says, almost cheerful, and Gabe can’t tell how much he knows, how much his mother told him, the doctors, whether that’s a matter-of-fact statement that’s just clouded by morphine or whether no one’s let him know. 

This is where Gabe should be telling him he’ll be back in no time. He can’t think of what he’s supposed to say when he can’t tell him that. The silence between them stretches, almost snapping. Gabe can’t think of the last time he didn’t know what to say to Stephen. 

“I wish you were here,” Stephen says, finally, still a little hazy sounding, far off. Something in Gabe’s chest clenches, and he’s suddenly furious that he can’t be, that he’s got a game tomorrow night, that no one took things into account when they were drafted, split them up like it was just business, because it was.

“Me too,” Gabe says, throat tight, and Anouk must take the phone back, then, he can hear Stephen’s exasperation. 

“He’s tired,” she says. “He’s supposed to be resting, but he wanted to call you.”

“How bad is it?” Gabe gets out.

She’s silent, completely silent, though he can hear noise in the background, a door opening and shutting, a sudden burst of dull noise. In the hallway, then.

“There’s no timetable for his return,” she says, finally.

“ _Anouk_ ,” Gabe says. “C’mon.”

“His wrist is fucked,” she says, crude repetition of Stephen, minus the cheerfulness. Gabe can’t remember the last time he heard her swear, though it was probably over one of the broken bones. Gabe was always there for those. He was usually daring Stephen to do the stupid shit that ended up breaking his bones, but when she swore, it was never at him. “You know how bad it is, Gabe.”

“Just say it,” Gabe says. “Okay, can you just say it?”

She’s angry then, he doesn’t know if it’s at him for pushing her, at him for sitting on the other end of the line, uninjured, nothing more than a series of aches and bruises, yeah, but healthy. If it’s not at him at all, if it’s at the stupid fucking puck, at the Flyers defenseman with a brutal one-timer, at the whole shitty situation. “He’s done,” she snaps, and then, softer. “He’s done.”

Gabe’s eyes sting. “Does he know?” he asks.

“He will,” she says, still soft. 

“Keep me updated,” Gabe says, and then, voice cracking, “if I need to come down, I’m sure they’d let me take a game off, maybe--”

“Oh, honey,” she breaks in, so gentle, unbearably so, and then, “oh honey,” again, a whisper, when he starts to cry.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Warning** : Career-ending injury is depicted. 
> 
> I have a [tumblr!](http://youcouldmakealife.tumblr.com/)


End file.
